Thursday, September 5, 2013

I’m assuming that since you’re on a food blog you've
probably heard about “cronuts,” but just in case,
here’s a quick review.

This croissant/doughnut hybrid was invented by Dominique
Ansel at the Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City. It became an overnight
sensation, and now people stand in line for hours just for a chance at getting
one of the precious few that are made each day.

Why all the hype? Very simple – it has the shape and flavor of a doughnut, yet features the crispy, flaky texture of a buttery croissant. What’s not to hype? Anyway, after seeing like two dozen new reports on the
craze, and receiving a scary number of food wishes for it, I decided to give it
a go, if for no other reason than to save a few of my NYC friends the humiliation of being Instagrammed standing in that line.

Since I’ve never tasted a cronut, what follows is purely an
educated guess, but I think I got pretty close. Maybe one of you New Yorkers
will mail me one, so I know for sure? My game plan was simple. Make a slightly
sweet, yeasty, doughnut-esque dough, which I’d then layer with butter, using
the classic croissant technique.

It’s a procedure I do all the time, as in once, back in
culinary school, thirty years ago. So, instead of going by the book, or even
looking in a book, I winged it, and not only that, I streamlined things too.
Instead painstakingly pounding out perfectly sized slabs of cold butter, I
decided to try simply spreading softened butter instead. I also threw caution
to the wind, and pulled off the rare and terrifying “double fold and turn,” and
lived to tell the tale.

Like I said in the video, we’ll cover the final results in Part 2, but spoiler alert…these were awesome. I did two different versions, one
regular, and one with an extra “fold and turn” which resulted in a taller, and
even more impressive cronut. Stay tuned!

Hello! I would like to try these, but am wondering if I could do most of the work the day before and keep them in the fridge until I fry them in the morning. Is this possible? Would I stop at the last fold? Thanks!

I have never heard about Cronut but on the same day you teach me about it. I found out that this pastry chef create a new dessert: Magic Soufflehttp://www.finedininglovers.com/blog/news-trends/magic-soufle-cronut-dominique-ansel/

Hey chef John! Can i use the same dough if I just wanted to make regular donuts? These look amazing, but i just don't have the time to do all the folding. Where would i stop the process and start frying?

Hello Chef John, I love those duonuts and as we speak I'm making them , they look very delicious...P.S. I was wondering if you can make pumpkin dounuts like these one but with puree pumpkin...thank you.

Chef John, Will these work without the European-style butter?(ie. just using the normal unsalted butter) And is there a particular limit to how much sugar I can add? Thank you for your amazing videos and recipes. Have just gotten hooked :)

I was making this today and it seems that the quantity of liquid is greater than the amount of flour added cos I could not get a dough. Is the flour required really 1 pound which is about 2 cups? I think I added another 1 cup or more to get a dough.

A pound of flour is not 2 cups! A cup of flour weights about 4.25, so it's closer to 3 1/2 cups per pound! You're confusing weight and volume. A cup is 8 oz by volume, not weight! A cup of lead weighs more than a cup of feathers, etc.

I made these and they were amazing! I tried another recipe once which failed completely but dang.. this was amazing! I tried putting some of the dough in the oven but.. they turned into hard bready-cookies.

Hi chef !! Do you think your dough recipe would work for just croissants ? My wife is on bed rest (7 mos pregnant) and she's craving croissants but all the recipes I've found are much too time consuming....

No problem, thanks for the quick reply! My wife has been on bed rest for almost 2 months now and you've kept us quite full...I've made french bread, grilled brie sandwiches, cheese puffs, meat soup, bravas quiche (we live in BCN so quite a good remake), and tomorrow lamb roast! You've made her 2 months fly by in a breeze!

Hi there. I just found your site/youtube channel. Very good! I felt like experimenting today so i used this cronut recipe, but i substituted half the water and milk with pumpkin puree and a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. I also mixed a splash of roasted pumpkin seed oil through the butter prior to lamination to boost the pumpkiny flavour. I also have a self imposed "no deep frying at home" rule, so i treated the finished product as a danish dough. The results were surprisingly good. Upon further inspection, I discovered you have a pumpkin scroll recipe on your site with quite similar ingredients. I would be very interested to know the results of deep frying a laminated and yeast leavened pumpkin infused dough as you would a cronut. If someone tries,I would love to know!I also made a 'pumpkin cheesecake' style filling for my bear claws and pinwheels. Pumpkin puree, cream cheese, pumpkin spice, maple syrup and an egg yolk. Something similar would be a great cronut filling (minus the egg).Thanks again!

It should go without saying, but these are the least healthy thing ever put on a plate. It tastes exactly like what it is: 2 sticks of breaded and fried butter! They made me physically weaker after consumption. These are beyond donuts. They are a heart attack incarnate.

They turned out wonderful, they were (did I say were?) flaky, crunchy and didn't even taste the grease. I don't know what the original cronuts taste like like but our friends said my cronuts are the best. Thank you so so very much for such a detail video.